Maduro is on my dead pool this year. Partially out of hope, partially out of profit.

But end of the day, you can't have ten percent of your population leave (likely a lot of the most capable) and your economy have a million percent inflation and expect the people to be happy. And by and large a good percentage of the country wasn't happy even back when money was good.

If the US diplomats won't leave then Trump is hoping for a hostage style situation - probably less painful for the Venezuelans to ignore the US diplomats unless there is a bloodless opportunity to put them on a plane.

Unsurprising domestic political reactions in Germany. Government, Greens and Liberals are calling for free and fair elections. The Left Party is largely supporting Maduro, either out of good old international socialist solidarity, or even better older anti-Americanism - though the "enemy of my enemy" logic looks a little strained considering one of those decrying the "imperialist coup" is MP Sevim Dagdelen, also an always-vocal critic of Recep T. Erdogan who has of course come out for his "brother" Maduro. I've looked, but not found a peep from the AfD, probably due to different takes of their pro-Trump and pro-Putin camps.

I'm ildly wondering what Russia or China could do beyond words to prop up Maduro á la Assad, in a purely technical way; politically, there are obviously any number of reasons against it. But even disregarding that, Venezuela is not even Syria-close for either of them, and in the US backyard.

Nothing to be gained supporting Maduro, because he hangs on what the Army decides to do. He will be exiled or not, as the top heads of the armed services have been bought years ago, so this will be down to Captains and Majors. But if he's kicked out, there's not going to be a split country wishing he was back.

Nothing to be gained supporting Maduro, because he hangs on what the Army decides to do. He will be exiled or not, as the top heads of the armed services have been bought years ago, so this will be down to Captains and Majors. But if he's kicked out, there's not going to be a split country wishing he was back.

Russian and China are heavily leveraged into the Vez economy. The Chinese practically own what's left of their oil production at this point. Allowing Maduro to fall to an alternative government opens the door to the country reneging on all payment since the Maduro government is being interpreted as illegitimate in the West (rather rightly so). So for purely economic reasons, China and Russia will be Maduro fans to the end. They probably also enjoy anything that annoys the west, but it isn't the driving force.

It does appear that Johny Big Balls Bolton is intentionally trying to bait Maduro into doing something stupid with the move to keep US diplomats in place. There's zero support for any US military involvement otherwise. Basically a Bengazi x10 move. If the US wanted to put pressure on the regime the easy way its to sanction its oil industry and watch it grind to a halt when it loses access to US refineries and US light sweep blending crude, though obviously that would piss off big oil which is a big no-no.